Week 3 flower, should I defoliate?

[Alpaca]

I've never really defoliated before, but I'm willing to give it a try if it's going to boost productivity . Should I be

only removing leaves at the bottom or snip some big fan leaves at the top too?

 

[ReeferRon]

Some say yes some say no.....I say three weeks into flower is about a week or two to late to defoliate. That's just my opinion though. At this stage I would practice the tuck method to expose bud sites being covered by large fan leaves. You may have to tuck a couple times a day but this method causes almost no stress. While I think defoliation in flower does. Again only my 2 cents...

 

[Alpaca]

She's too bushy to tuck unfortunately, my humidity is about 65% and I need it to be lower

 

[Grownsince95]

If that were my tent I would go to town and fill a shopping bag with leaves...in a few weeks you could be in PM hell with off the charts RH. Just my opinion though and you will get lots of those around here lol

 

[JSH1973]

I'm a new grower only in my first month of my first grow but I'm already in the defoliation camp, I can't believe the amount I have had to take off already.

 

[growsince79]

She's too bushy to tuck unfortunately, my humidity is about 65% and I need it to be lower

I never understood why people veg plants twice as long as they need to just to rip all the leaves off. Those are small enough you shouldn't have to if other factors are good. Do you have an exhaust blowing out of the house?

 

[Grownsince95]

I never understood why people veg plants twice as long as they need to just to rip all the leaves off. Those are small enough you shouldn't have to if other factors are good. Do you have an exhaust blowing out of the house?

It's an S&M thing ⛓ that and super cropping is really hot You can do it through the duct opening on the side of the tent like a glory hole if you want too!

 

[linde]

I would wait. fan leaves feed the plant. don't strip until last couple of weeks when the buds have done the majority of their growing and are starting to ripen. then strip them down.

 

[Grownsince95]

Seeing the other responses I want to add something so I don't give the wrong impression. I'm not saying to go crazy and take off all the leaves as my post may have suggested in an attempt at a little humor. What I'm saying is I see a lot of stuff buried down at the bottom that's getting no light and just contributing extra humidity when it was something the OP said he wanted to reduce. The stuff down by the arrows I drew on the picture is what I'm talking about taking out, all that beautiful stuff on the top needs to stay to feed the plant

 

[Alpaca]

I never understood why people veg plants twice as long as they need to just to rip all the leaves off. Those are small enough you shouldn't have to if other factors are good. Do you have an exhaust blowing out of the house?

I Dont quite understand what youre saying here, veg twice as long? She was only in veg for about 6 weeks because i wanted to cover my entire surface area. I Do have an exhaust fan with a carbon filter at the top but my country is still humid this time of year.

 

[Alpaca]

I snipped about 40 fan leaves to start, mostly for air circulation and light penetration

 

[Odiesel]

Personally i would defoliate some, but thats just my inexperienced opinion. I have the light density to supposedly not need to strip leaves but i believe it definitely helped when i did it lowering RH and allowing much more air flow. I did a heavy defoliation on day 21 happily.